


Wealth of Wisdom

by lilyplujambah



Category: Salvation (TV)
Genre: F/M, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:21:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26834389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyplujambah/pseuds/lilyplujambah
Summary: Above him, Darius sees a small, golden line etch itself into the patterns of stars and darkness. It disappears as quickly as it appears and all that is left are small remnants of the broken meteor. They, too, fade out of existence almost faster than the naked eye can see. Grace points out the shooting star with untethered happiness and excitement. He nods briefly and repositions himself, swinging his arm around her shoulders. “Is that what’ll happen with the asteroid tomorrow?” Grace asks quietly. “Only, worse?”
Relationships: Grace Barrows/Darius Tanz
Comments: 14
Kudos: 3





	1. Sirius and Canopus and HD140283

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emilie_786](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emilie_786/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I do not own anything in association with Salvation.

_The day before the landing…_  
  
“You see that constellation taking up the entirety of that patch of sky - the one with a ‘belt’ of stars and a bright, flickering orange star at the top?” Darius leans in close to Grace and guides her arm so she is pointing directly at _Orion_. He is sure that she can feel his breath patter against her cheek but does not move away. Her wrist is cold when he touches it and he immediately feels an overwhelming sense of intimacy.   
  
“I’ve always wondered which one it was,” she mumbles, turning to face him. Her dry lips meet his cheek and he turns back to her and pulls her into a soft kiss. She smiles at him, though he can barely see in the limited light. “What about that star?” She looks back to the sky and lowers herself onto her back. He follows slowly and places himself with their arms brushing.   
  
He traces the line of her arm with his eyes and finds himself staring at a bright, white star. “Canopus? That’s the second brightest star in the sky. It’s ten thousand-”  
  
“Which is the brightest?” Grace interrupts him with a broad smile.   
  
Darius points directly above them and softly says, “Sirius.” When he lowers his arm, he continues, “it’s not nearly as big as Canopus though. Unlike Canopus, it’s only eight-point-three lightyears out from our solar system and has an absolute magnitude of only one-point-four-two.” He feels Grace subtly place her hand over his between them. “I don’t know what any of that means, Darius.”  
  
“It means that Sirius is only bigger because it is much closer to Earth. It’s apparent magnitude - the size or luminosity it appears to be in our sky - is negative one-point-four-six. (Negative is larger than positive in this case.) Whereas, Canopus has an apparent magnitude of only negative point-seven-four, but an absolute magnitude - it’s actual luminosity/size - of negative five-point-seven-one.” Darius silences for a moment. “Would it help if I said that the Sun’s actual luminosity is four-point-seven-seven? And, yet, because it is so close to Earth, it seems as though it has a luminosity of negative twenty-six-point-eight.”   
  
Grace exhales and nods in an understanding of what Darius is saying and sits up again. “Which is your favourite star?”  
  
He shifts slightly to position himself more comfortably and whispers, “HD-one-four-zero-two-eight-three.”  
  
Grace’s mouth drops open. “HD-what?”  
  
“It’s a peculiar star. Although it’s not visible by the naked eye, it’s very easy to see with binoculars.” He sits up beside her. “It’s older than the universe, apparently.”  
  
“Whats?!” she exclaims, laughing breathlessly into the chilly air. “No way.”  
  
Darius nods. “Yeah, all calculations place it, at least, thirteen-point-two-billion years old - that’s the minimum. Really, it’s said to be fourteen-point-four billion years old. And, funnily enough, it’s a second-generation star.”  
  
Above him, Darius sees a small, golden line etch itself into the patterns of stars and darkness. It disappears as quickly as it appears and all that is left are small remnants of the broken meteor. They, too, fade out of existence almost faster than the naked eye can see. Grace points out the shooting star with untethered happiness and excitement. He nods briefly and repositions himself, swinging his arm around her shoulders.   
  
“Is that what’ll happen with the asteroid tomorrow?” Grace asks quietly. “Only, worse?”  
  
He struggles to appreciate the change in topic. The impending doom of the asteroid has been dawning on him for the past six months, but more so since he woke from his coma. If his theory of it’s not truly being an asteroid is correct, they should be fine, but he can never be certain. He ponders describing his theory but immediately thinks of the cruelty of false hope at such a time. “If you dwell on the past or future you will miss the moment,” he says instead, settling for something more philosophical.   
  
Grace mumbles quietly in agreement and lies down, pulling him with her. He notices when her hand doesn’t leave his chest and a wealth of warmth overwhelms him when she turns to the side and rests against him. Their legs tangle and their bodies fit snugly together. Darius wonders if he should try to keep them awake - to draw their final evening out even more - but, when he hears her soft snore, he decides to rest and hopefully sleep, content with her in his arms. 


	2. Gravity and Ursa Minor

_The day of the landing…_  
  
“I was right! I was right!” Darius chants as he hastily makes his way through Grace’s front door. When he stops, the room is deadly silent for a long moment before he sees her jogging down the stairs to meet him. “Grace, hey. I was right.”  
  
She stops right before him. Her eyes are puffy and red, her cheeks wet. Her smile hardly looks natural and her hair is a bird's nest. Balanced between her fingers are essentials - toiletries - and the clothes she wears are rugged and loose. “Right about what?” she asks. He can hear the wavering uncertainty in her voice, her own self-consciousness.  
  
“The asteroid… Well, the mass; it’s not an asteroid. It can’t be.” He steps beside and pulls out a tablet. “I’ve been tracking the mass, running numerous calculations- This mass is moving in ways it shouldn’t.” He takes a deep breath. “Look, I know that Liam, Croft and I disproved Newton’s third law of motion, but, in order to do so, his first law and second laws have to be correct - there was no way to create the EM drive without them as constants. Newton’s first law states that an object in uniform motion will remain as such unless a force is acted upon it. Now…” Darius quickly flips through some graphs on his tablet. “The only forces currently acting upon the mass are Earth and the Moon’s gravity and the solar sail, or so we thought. Two days ago, Antarctica said that there had been neutron bursts - minute corrections of the masses trajectory, small releases of energy. This means that this isn’t-”  
  
Grace steps back. “Look, Darius, I don’t have time for this. I need to leave; they’re closing the bunkers very soon.”  
  
Darius puts his tablet away and grabs Grace’s shoulders. “Don’t you hear what I’m saying?” he begs, looking desperately into her eyes.  
  
“Yes, yes. Look, I might be able to get you into a bunker if someone doesn’t-”  
  
“Grace!” Darius yells. She silences immediately and stiffens under his grasp. “It’s not an asteroid.”  
  
“What do you mean ‘it’s not an asteroid’?” He watches as she looks around the room, before fixing her gaze upon him.  
  
“Unless an asteroid can drive itself, that thing hurtling toward us, it’s not an asteroid.”  
  
Grace sighs and leans against the stair railing. “I thought we said that there would be no ridiculous-”  
  
“It’s why the rail gun missed!”  
  
“You were proved wrong, Darius! Harris said-”  
  
“Dear, God, bloody Harris-”  
  
“I-” As she begins to defend Harris, Darius places his hand over her mouth.  
  
“Follow me,” he mumbles quietly, before grabbing her hand and leading her out into her front garden. The chilly breeze hits him and, as he turns to find Grace shivering in her baggy t-shirt, he slips off his coat and wraps it around her arms. Guiding her sight with her arm, just as he’d done the night before, he shows her _Ursa Minor_ \- “the little bear,” he whispers into her ear.  
  
Beside him, Grace attempts to suppress a snort. “That’s not a bear.”  
  
“No,” Darius laughs. “I agree, it is far from one, in my opinion. Regardless, the asteroid, or mass, is heading towards us through the four stars, in that rectangle shape - the body of the bear. Or, at least, it was.” He grabs a pair of large binoculars from his backpack and hands them to her. She slips her arms though the sleeves of his jacket and raises the binoculars to her eyes. “What am I looking at?” she asks as she moves her head around.  
  
“The wrong patch of sky,” Darius mumbles as he points her, once again, in the right direction. “Do you see that little brown-ish black-ish thingo moving in slow circles up there?”  
  
There’s a long moment of silence as Grace hunts for the small object. He takes the time to study her appearance. Aside from her messy hair and crumpled top, she seems fine. He notices that she’s lost some weight, she’s skinnier than she was only three days ago. Her back is hunched ever so slightly and her hands shake even as she holds the binoculars. “What is it?” she questions suddenly, knocking him from his reverie.  
  
“That’s the mass - or the stupid ass space rock, as you so eloquently put it the other day.” He shivers and crosses his arms around him.  
  
“Why is it going in circles?” Grace pulls her eyes from the sky and looks at him.  
  
“I have absolutely no idea.” He thinks for a brief second before staring up at the object again. “Actually…” He kindly snatches his binoculars from Grace’s hands and analyses the object. He watches as its circle gradually widens, its trajectory not a perfect, nor true circle. Not once does it meet a previous point on it’s path. It’s spiralling. It is a well-known fact that, to survive the entry into Earth’s atmosphere, one must enter at an angle very near to forty degrees. How or why the mass is accounting for this, Darius doesn’t know. “It’s correcting it’s angle of trajectory,” he explains to Grace. “That must use so much fuel. Very odd way of going about it.” He continues rambling as he watches the object and flips through calculations in his head.  
  
“What does this mean?” Grace interrupts his thoughts.  
  
He looks back at her. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out,” he says, only partly truthfully.  
  
“Is it some alien spaceship?” she asks. There’s something in her tone or, maybe, it’s simply the fact that it’s Grace speaking, that makes him take her seriously.  
  
“In any other situation, I’d ask if you were drunk but, I suppose, that’s quite a viable assumption given the circumstances,” he answers honestly, grabbing her hand in his.  
  
“It’d change our lives completely.”  
  
He faces her abruptly. “Well… not necessarily.”  
  
“What do you mean?” She looks back at him slowly, her eyes no longer tinted by the redness of her earlier crying.  
  
“When I was a child, my mother made certain that I remembered this: life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you react to it.” He looks to the stars and smiles. “I carry that with me everywhere I go.”  
  
Grace laughs and points to her front door. “Lemme get changed,” she mumbles as she runs out of sight. When she returns, she’s in the same red dress she wore at their third encounter - where he asked her to join him. She looks beautiful. That, he is certain of. She replaces a bobby pin in her hair, saying, “where shall we view this circular landing, Darius?”  
  
“I know just the place,” he whispers as he pulls her into a kiss.  
  
Together, they quickly make it to Tanz, where a hidden door in the treehouse opens to an extravagant balcony. The stars are incredibly bright from such a terrace and Darius can’t help but awe at how happy he is. How perfect he feels with Grace right beside him. Despite that, he is sure that there is something missing.  
  
“If you don’t mind,” he begins, turning to look into her eyes. “I thought we could dance.” The soft tones of the saxophones whistle through the air when she nods and he can’t help but get lost in the moment.


	3. Nuclear Waste and Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay

_The day after the landing…_  
  
The chair creaks as he repositions himself. It’s been a long time since he’s cleaned up his treehouse. Six months, namely. He looks at the mess around him and sighs. There are stacks of random books lying around and open holographic diagrams shining from various spots on the floor. It’s absolute chaos.  
  
He can hear the music only faintly through his whirring thoughts and distracting ideas and it’s beginning to make him dizzy. He decides to take a break. There’s no need to fight the war in his mind right now, so he walks to the elevator. The doors close after him and a sense of claustrophobia rises in him. He’s stuck in the same loop of thoughts, getting nowhere. His head aches from his trying to solve the mystery of how they got there and where they are from.  
  
The rock had finally landed the previous evening. It had lowered itself ever so slowly and come to a complete halt on the edge of the city. Having witnessed the entire thing, Darius and Grace quickly made it to the landing site and stared at the asteroid-like ship. Darius had lapped it a couple of times, comparing its precise details to those they had calculated from. There was only one opening, as far as he could tell, a door.  
  
Hours later, the door had finally opened. It was circular and allowed only these perfectly egg-shaped creatures through the hole. And, out, the creatures had come. They were very dark green with one arm-like limb outstretched from their stomachs. They rolled sideways by way of transportation and appeared to have no way of actually walking. They had been captured by the United States government almost immediately, much to Darius’ dismay. But, government officials had granted Darius access to the ship.  
  
It didn’t take long until he wound up where he currently is: studying a schematic - blueprint - of the ship. Taken and formed through various scans, Darius can see the visual representation of the neutrino bursts he had predicted and observed from four days ago. In the diagrams, it is very subtle - only a mist of neutrino emissions going in one particular direction. The centre of the ship is filled with nuclear waste, the kind that gladly emits neutrinos at high amounts and with moderate energy levels. Although Darius has these diagrams, there are still two problems that he cannot solve: where are the alien species from and how have they controlled the neutrinos.  
  
The elevator dings quietly as it announces its arrival at the ground floor. As Darius steps forward, he feels a body collide with his. He steps back, his headache still prevailing at studies the figure with his blurred sight. “Grace!” he exclaims. His voice is too loud because his forehead stings with the dizziness of a hangover and he can’t bear the volume.  
  
“Hey, Darius. How are you doing?” She’s bubbly and happy and awake and Darius struggles to not envy her full night of rest. He turns straight back into the elevator and quietly asks Tess to take them up.  
  
The computer does as instructed and welcomes them as they enter the treehouse once again. “Turn off the music, please,” Darius mumbles as he makes his way to the bedroom. He needs to sleep.  
  
“Are the effects of the coma still weighing on you?” Grace hypothesises.  
  
Darius falls onto his bed without getting changed, the cushiony foam of the mattress and pillow comforting to his pain. “That must be it.” He hadn’t considered it before, with everything that’s going on, he hasn’t slept in three days. Turning onto his side, his last conscious thought is sheets moving around him as Grace joins him in his bed.  
  
***  
  
Darius wakes to the smell of some true Canadian hickory-smoked bacon - his one biggest downfall as a proud Brit. The windowed, thick, plain bacon found in most parts of Europe repulse him more than he enjoys them. He slowly opens his eyes to find the blinds up and his duvet pulled off of his body. When the smell of frying eggs joins that of the bacon, Darius jumps up and heads for a quick shower.  
  
He eventually joins Grace in the kitchen and stands behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Good morning,” she says, leaning her head against his shoulder. She smells of strawberry, Darius notices. And her hair is tied up in an extravagant braid.  
  
“Very good morning,” he replies, kissing the top of her head. “What’s this for?” he asks as he pulls away. He placidly begins helping her; slicing some bread for the toaster, placing condiments on the table.  
  
“You’ve been asleep for seventeen hours, Darius. I got bored.” She laughs as she speaks and looks at him. She squeals very suddenly as a brief explosion of bacon fat lands on her hand. “That’s hot.”  
  
“Really? I would never have guessed,” Darius mocks before taking a closer look at her braid. “Have the government made any progress?”  
  
“About that…” Grace begins reluctantly. “I was thinking and then I thought and I’m not really sure if it was the right-”  
  
“You quit your job?” He isn’t surprised as he asks, he’d been suspecting she would for a while. “Yeah. I was gonna tell you yesterday, but then you fell asleep.” He laughs lightly at the course of the previous day. “Have you had any ideas?”  
  
“The starting point of all achievement is desire.”  
  
“That’s not an answer,” Grace retorts as she plates the food.  
  
Darius sighs and grabs a plate from her. “I’ve had one small idea, but I’m not sure if it’s entirely plausible.”  
  
“What is it?” she inquires, sitting down across from him.  
  
“They’ve found a way to control the neutrino emissions,” he starts, pulling up a holographic projector at the centre of the table. “If you look here, there are three rings around this pot of nuclear waste in the middle. Nuclear waste emits neutrinos as it decays. And, sometimes, it does this in twos. Now, this is where I was stuck yesterday, but I think I’ve got it. The number of neutrinos recorded in the bursts that we observed the other day by no means accounts for the amount that the ship moved to avoid our rail gun slugs. There was only a small emission, when, really, there should have been a very large emission.”  
  
“Okay, well, that much makes sense.” Grace shovels a large piece of bacon into her mouth.  
  
“Yeah? Well, imagine if neutrinoless double beta decay was true. This could be the evidence we need and it could also be the explanation for the minimal bursts. That being said, this relies on Newton’s third law of motion being correct, which it isn’t. Though, I suppose, if it works for the majority of kinematics, I see no reason it couldn’t work right now. Now, have a look at these three rings of really dense iron.” He moves the hologram to show her. “We assumed that the entirety of the inside was iron, hence the small asteroid that collided with it a while back hardly affected it. But, what if its great mass was only due to these three really dense, really hot rings. The furthest in and the furthest out ring are liquid, while the central one is solid. Do you see what I’m getting at?”  
  
Grace laughs as she swallows a piece of egg. “No, not at all.”  
  
He sighs briefly before continuing. “In 2010, there were numerous experiments carried out in Antarctica recording muon bursts when neutrinos interacted with ice sheets. It was ultimately to determine if neutrinos can pass through everything and anything, as previously assumed. The experiment was really successful in that, through using detectors at different angles, they were able to determine that the core of the Earth actually absorbs neutrinos. The greater the angle from the perpendicular, the more neutrinos were absorbed. From what I can ascertain, the nuclear waste in this ship is highly energised, emitting neutrinos with high amounts of energy. The species that built this ship essentially replicated the Earth’s core at a parallel angle using iron and it allows only minimal neutrino emissions to get through, thereby creating controllable emissions. The rings are movable, meaning that the barrier can be lifted and the emissions will escape however they can.”  
  
“Cool…” Grace starts, tapping her toast on the side of her plate. “So, what do we do about it?”  
  
“We write a paper on the evidential presence of neutrinoless double beta decay and win a Nobel Prize.” Darius towers his food into a bacon and egg sandwich before taking a large bite.  
  
“Really?”  
  
With a mouth full of food, he responds, “maybe we should find out where they’re from first.”


	4. The Milky Way and the Kuiper Belt and Europa

_Two days after the landing…_  
  
Darius wakes suddenly to a loud, shrill sound. It squeals in his ears and his headbangs with his pulse. He slowly recognises the sound - there’s a fire. Panicking quite abruptly, he jumps to his feet. He can hardly see, his eyes yet to adjust to the whirring red lights and lit-up pathways. Running to the bathroom, he splashes water on his face very unceremoniously, covering the bathroom in droplets of chilly water.  
  
“Tess, open blinds,” he croaks, mentally chastising his throat for being so raw. As the blinds open, he is overswept by darkness. He was expecting sunlight but is instead met with the knowledge that he is only underslept.  
  
He runs back to his bed to find Grace. She’s laying sideways, the covers between her two bent legs and her body hunched into a fetal position. _Beautiful_ , Darius thinks briefly, before switching into action. He skips over to her side and brushes the hair from her forehead. A part of him is determined to leave, but the other part really wishes to stay and watch her as she quietly snores. After studying her for a moment longer, he slides one arm under her legs and, the other, her neck and hoists her up, into his chest. As if by instinct, she slides her arms around his neck. She’s so delicate, he decides. And he feels oddly guilty and privileged to be allowed to hold her in such a vulnerable state.   
  
He senses her stir against him as he instructs Tess to allow him onto the balcony. Grace moans quietly and shivers, likely from the cold. He watches as she opens her eyes. “What are you doing?” she asks, her voice as broken as his when he first spoke to Tess.   
  
“There’s a fire. Can you walk?” he questions softly. He lowers her feet onto the ground and steadies her as she straightens. He makes his way to the edge of the balcony and, lifting up a small trap door, looks downwards, twelve metres to the ground. A wave of worry captures him in his uncertainty. His heart rate increases and his breathing quickens. He has to climb a ladder twelve metres down. The thought itself renders him almost immobile. Anxiety begins to congeal in his veins, his sight becoming blurred.   
  
He flinches quite suddenly as a hand touches his shoulder. Turning around, with adrenaline coursing through him, he sees a concerned look on Grace’s face. He almost jumps in fright, but, instead, his heel gets caught against the trap door and he falls against the fence of the balcony. The pain strikes him immediately and his discomfort worsens and he bends over himself trying to stop the feelings of daggers in his back and arm. He can just barely see Grace coming to his side. She grabs his shoulders and, amidst the hazy cyclone of thoughts in his mind, Darius launches himself forward to hug her. He holds on as though she is a lifeline, he can hardly stay out of his head, his techniques from his childhood not working. He can’t breathe, he can’t feel anything, he can’t hold his own weight, everything pulling him down. He feels weighted and useless, until, in a rush of barely a second, it all washes away.   
  
Working his breathing back to normal, he sits himself up straighter and blinks his eyes. He’d cried, he can tell as much from the breeze chilling his wet cheeks. He’s still clinging onto Grace, though only marginally. And the sounds from inside the Tanz Industries building are still blaring. He tries to stand up, but only collapses once again.   
  
Grace pulls away then and lends him a hand to help him up. “You good?” she asks, apparently ignoring what had really just happened. He grabs her hand, stands up and nods.   
  
He walks the short distance to the trap door and suppresses the waves of fear that, once again, start to pester him. He begins down the ladder, slowly at first, before speeding up as he gains some comfort and familiarity. He glances upward to see Grace above him and forces himself to not look down. _Darius Tanz, tech extraordinaire_ , he reminds himself, pondering the look on people’s faces if they knew about his crippling anxiety. It’s certainly not something he advertises, and not something he’d particularly wanted Grace to witness.   
  
It’s too late now, he notes as he finally lands a foot on the ground. Feeling dizzy, he lowers himself and lies down on the ground. It’s not a comfortable position, but it certainly beats lifting his own weight. He debates falling asleep, dozing off right then and there. It’s peaceful on the ground, his mind only partially working.   
  
His thoughts are stopped rather abruptly by the call of Grace to, “get a move on”. He stands up unstably and chases after her. When he reaches her side, she asks, “where are we going?”   
  
He works to order his thoughts just enough to visualise a map of the area in his mind. Searching for the closest and safest place, he finds a park, “not half a kilometre away.”   
  
They begin their journey to the park at a brisk walk, keen to leave the danger of a fire. They don’t speak during their journey, settling for a mutual hurriedness. They reach a traffic light and, as Darius goes to half-mindedly press the button to cross the road, his land makes contact with Grace’s. He laughs lightly and glances at her, who, upon seeing him happier, laughs as well.   
  
Darius is surprised at his happiness when their unintentional interaction sparks a conversation. He jumps willingly into the conversation about the city. He takes a leap of confidence and reaches his arm out to take hold of her hand. When she walks closer to his side, he grasps her and rubs his thumb against the back of her hand.   
  
Bumping lightly into each other occasionally and walking to a shared beat, they make it the rest of the way to the park. Having no shoes on his feet, Darius feels the damp grass between his toes immediately. It’s very grounding and helps him rid himself of the remainders of his panic attack. He squeezes her hand in a show of affection and points to a patch of grass before them. “Do you want to go stargazing?” he asks, smiling at the thought of watching the stars with her again.   
  
She nods eagerly and lies down, pulling him down beside her. “I was once told that that haze of stuff…” She points at a large haze of light from the sky. “Is the Milky Way.” The stars are hardly visible where they are, the light pollution prevailing and limiting their sight.   
  
“Yeah, it is. It’s much clearer in the Southern Hemisphere though.” He shifts on the uneven ground. “This is nothing compared to the beauty of it down there. I suppose it’s a good thing that you live in the Northern Hemisphere,” he comments.  
  
She turns her head to him. “And why’s that?”   
  
“‘Cause your beauty is radiant enough that it accommodates for the lack of a visible Milky Way.”   
  
He smiles at her as she laughs.   
  
“That was so bad,” she snorts.   
  
“Fair enough,” he says, leaning closer to her.   
  
They sit in silence for a while, simply observing the stars and studying their patterns. “There are so many kites in the sky,” Grace mumbles.   
  
“Well, it’s very easy to find four stars and form a quadrilateral.”  
  
“Where do you think they’re from?”   
  
He glances at her. “The green egg aliens?” She nods. “Well, at first, I was trying to find a plausible planet. The Milky Way is huge after all. And, we don’t know enough about their species to know their lifespan, they’re physical makeup etc. But, what if they didn’t come from another planetary or stellar system. There are at least 2000 catalogued objects in the Kuiper Belt. And that's only those that people have bothered to document. There are millions, billions, trillions in the Kuiper Belt. They could be from anywhere within there."   
  
He continues to debate the ideas of their whereabouts in his head as Grace mentions, "don't all living things need water or something?"  
  
"Oh, yeah. Well, there isn't the greatest abundance of water in the Kuiper Belt. There is a fair amount of ice-"  
  
"Is that a plane or…?" Grace points to a small, moving, golden dot in the sky.   
  
"A plane… That's the clue," Darius claims, not wholly noticing her question.   
  
"It doesn't have any green or red, flashing dots, so it can't be."  
  
The pair break off into a separate pondering of their respective thoughts. They mumble quietly and even pretend to acknowledge each others' musings. A peaceful atmosphere washes over them. In a time they ideally should be in distress, they find themselves lying comfortably in the wet grass of a night not without condensation. Grace comes to the conclusion that the small object she can see in the sky is, in fact, a satellite and Darius struggles with the thought of where the little aliens originated.   
  
“Oh, wow. The moon’s barely visible tonight,” Grace comments as the waning crescent moon announces itself in the sky.   
  
“Europa!” Darius almost shouts. “The moon sixth furthest from Jupiter.”  
  
“What about it?” Grace asks, curling into his side.  
  
“I was wondering why the aliens were so green. Chlorophyll. It all makes sense.” Darius smiles broadly as he cuddles Grace self-consciously, his fingers drawing circles on her arm.   
  
She hums softly. “It does?”   
  
“Of course!” Darius exclaims. “It’s a planet covered in water, well, ice, as far as we're officially aware. I’ve always suspected there was water underneath the surface of Europa, supporting the life of numerous creatures and organisms. And, as their ship is powered by nuclear waste, it makes sense that they’d have to have some sort of nuclear reactor. And, in Singapore, it was proven that nuclear reactors can, genuinely, operate underwater. On top of that, our current knowledge of Europa is so minimal that it’s entirely possible that an entire underground civilisation is alive. And, the minimal sunlight would require that the majority of organisms photosynthesise. That’s why they’re green. Am I making sense?”   
  
Grace laughs and pats his chest. “Since when have you ever been concerned with making sense?”   
  
Despite her sarcastic comment, or, perhaps, in spite of it, Darius continues. “The question of why they passed Jupiter is still confusing. I’d need to check, but I’m pretty sure that Europa is- Oh! Yes, they would’ve launched in the wrong direction. That’s actually quite funny.”   
  
Just as he finishes his thought, the pair go silent. The stars flicker above them and birds chirp quietly to mark the very early morning. Darius feels a new breeze patter unevenly against his arm and the side of his face and feet. Slowly, clouds start to cover the sky, like a curtain closing for the end of a show.   
  
“I wonder what Zoe’s up to,” Grace states randomly, breaking the silence almost jarringly. “I feel guilty about having left her. I could’ve gone with them - her and Dylan. They probably don’t even know if I’m alive.” She sits up and plays with her hands in her lap.  
  
Darius takes the opportunity to move behind her, swing his legs around her and embrace her from behind. “You can't live your life for other people. You've got to do what's right for you, even if it hurts some of the people you love.”   
  
“Is that really what you think?” She rests her head back against him.   
  
Darius shakes his head and kisses her hair. “Me? No. But it’s what I was always told. And, in my opinion, your daughter did that which was best for her and you did what was best for you.”  
  
“Why do I feel like you’re just saying that?” He watches as she crooks her neck to look at him. “Because I love you and I’m glad that you chose to join me.”  
  
She giggles before saying, “ah, so, it’s not what’s best for me, it’s what’s best for you.” She leans up to kiss him on the cheek when he sighs and looks out into the distance.   
  
“Maybe,” he mumbles, before lifting her up and turning her around to kiss her properly.   
  
Her lips are warm, he decides, in stark contrast to the cold of the night. Her skin is soft and her pyjamas, which he bought for after he woke from his coma, are cosy, even from the outside. Her frame fits between his arms perfectly and he quickly gets lost in the moment. That is, until an Earlybird jogger comes by whistling jauntily.   
  
They pull apart quickly, only, then, noticing the rising Sun over the horizon. The reds, oranges, and yellows that shoot through the sky, almost akin to any depiction of an angle in a movie. When Grace laughs, Darius feels an overwhelming sense of familiarity - as though this is where he wants to be, where he’s always, ultimately, wanted to find himself.   
  
“I have Generalised and Social Anxiety Disorder,” he confesses into the chilly air.   
  
Grace looks up. “Hmmm?”  
  
“It’s burdened me for years - since I was a child.” He looks down and grabs her hands.  
  
“You have social anxiety. Mister Science and Technology Extraordinaire Darius Tanz has anxiety, really?”  
  
He nods quickly. “What happened earlier, that was a panic attack. All the stress lately has been building on me and, then, the smoke and fire alarm and the twelve-metre ladder - I have a fear of heights too, as much as I hate to admit it. I just couldn’t contain it. It was like I’d finally capsized like I hadn’t in years.” He chokes on his rising saliva and tears. “I thought I’d taken control and defeated it, but it’s still there, burdening me in my sleep, taunting me during speeches. I hate it. I-” He stops when he begins to cry. Sobbing into her arms is decidedly better than sitting alone in Tanz Industries awaiting the final selection of the one hundred and sixty candidates, he thinks. Because that’s where he’d be, were it not for the alien ship. He’d have only ever encountered Grace once at the Croatian Embassy that would’ve been the entirety of their relationship, their acquaintance, rather.   
  
It’s difficult for him to perceive the stress, havoc and disaster of the last six months as anything aside from devastating, but to think of the underlying happiness the asteroid has brought him. To think of Grace and everything she’s brought into his life. To think of her quirks, her interests, her beauty and her skillfulness with words can only ever bring him joy.   
  
He snuggles closer to her when, randomly, he hears her whisper, “I love you too.” It grounds him completely, settles him into a committed relationship with an amazing partner, someone he never thought that he’d have the opportunity to love. Perhaps this is all he needed, someone to confide in and someone to know him for who he is, not the persona he puts on for show.   
  
He begins to stand up, lifting her with him. “We should head back and see the damage,” he says quietly. She agrees willingly and grabs his hand as they walk their way back to their home.


End file.
